Yesterday’s Community Team discussion was fantastic! We had 99 people registered for the event, and 43 attendees from all around the world! Thank you all for your passion, curiosity, and energy during the call and during the brainstorming session.
We started the session with an introduction about the organizer, volunteer, and sponsor struggle coming back to in-person events after the pandemic, and the new purpose that emerged from it for the WP Community.
After clarifying doubts regarding the future of traditional Meetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. and WordCamps, we had a brainstorming session aimed to generate new ideas for the next generation of WordPress events. Participants discussed in small groups about fundamental aspects that we have to consider when moving forward with pilot events for new event types.
We asked attendees to ignore the hanbooks and focus on the new purpose and for the event to be:
- doable (for human and financial resources)
- repeatable (by new/old organizer and more than once per year)
- scalable (other communities might try the same format)
- desirable (for organizer, attendees, sponsors, volunteers).
Keeping the above in mind, in 9 breakout rooms attendees brainstormed about the following topics:
- Event formats (room 1-2)
- Organizing team structure (room 3-4)
- Organizing timeline (room 5-6)
- Benefits for sponsors (room 7-8)
- Infrastructure/tools required (room 9)
After the session, which lasted about 10 minutes, we all came back to the main room and we shared the outcomes of our discussions. Many people agreed that 10 minutes were not enough to deeply discuss the topics assigned.
We encouraged attendees to bring the same conversation in their Meetups Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. and communities, and we’ll soon publish talking points that they can use if needed.
We ended the session inviting everyone to share their ideas for new event formats using this form, so the Community Team can collect all ideas and get back to organizers who want to have pilot events in their communities.
The community team would love to support as many pilot events as possible already in 2023.
Below some ideas, feedback, and thoughts from the brainstorming session.
Event format
Ideas
- Youth camp: open only 15-25 year old newbies, and teach them how to build an e-commerce site
- HostCamp – WC for specific technology like – hosting, domain, performance and security
- LearnCamp – Mainly focusing on settings up websites and CMS
Organizing Team Structure
The team setup depends on the event size and expectations. A medium sized Workshop event would need the following teams:
- Leads
- Sponsors
- Logistics
- Budget
- Content
The content team is special in this case as it should consist of people who are great in the skills (dev, design, architecture, security, etc.) But also be capable to work with the facilitators on how to make the workshop a success for everyone involved.
Benefits for Sponsors
It is challenging to find a way to increase sponsor visibility and benefit, without taking this space from speakers and volunteers. Some ideas and thoughts about experiment to try.
- Target a specific audience: at themed events, have sponsors interested in that specific audience
- Networking moments for sponsors to connect with job seekers
- Give sponsor possibility to open up to new markets (e.g. WooCommerce did not have the local currency in a country, but through WordCamps, they got it! Yay!)
- Organize for attendees a “sponsor tour” to meet all sponsors
Tooling
Ideas
- AI airpods for instant translations
- For speakers application: having 1 tool to manage all applications, instead of having different manual processes (email, form) to manage by organizers in each website
- Have dedicated and specific tools depending on the event size
General doubts and challenges shared by the attendees
- It’s difficult to decide the local sponsorship level, it would be useful to have guidelines for each country or based on the Mac Index
- It’s very challenging to get local sponsorship (especially Nigeria/Uganda if communities are small) but organizing big events is hard because of the lack of volunteers. One solution could be organizing an event halfway in attendance between Meetup and WordCamps, but keeping it to 1 event per year
- For Regional WordCamps one day is not enough, people travel from other cities and need to spend more time together
- The current ticketing system is limiting
Thank you so much to all people who attended yesterday’s session, there will be more to come next month, both online and in-person!
In-person discussions at WC Europe, Athens:
Keep an eye out for the next virtual discussion!
Thank you to all organizers who have already shared their ideas for new event formats and want to give it a try in 2023! If anybody else has an idea in mind, share it with the Community Team and we’ll get back to you to try to make it happen!
When thinking about new formats, please keep in my the purpose:
WordPress events spark innovation and adoption by way of accessible training and networking for users, builders, designers, and extenders. We celebrate community by accelerating 21st-century skills, professional opportunities, and partnerships for WordPressers of today and tomorrow.
The new generation of WordPress events will be:
- doable (for human and financial resources)
- repeatable (by new/old organizer and more than once per year)
- scalable (other communities might try the same format)
- desirable (for organizer, attendees, sponsors, volunteers)
Looking forward to meeting with you all soon again!
Thanks again to @samsuresh , @devinmaeztri, and @angelasjin for facilitating the session.
#community-events,
#events-2,
#next-gen-events
